As much as many of us like to think that we’re highly organized and efficient when it comes to our use of Twitter, there is in fact a lot we can do to make our lives easier.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve adopted some fairly radical measures to streamline and improve my use of Twitter, which I’ll share with you here.
1 – Cut the Number of People You Follow
The temptation when you first start using Twitter is to embark on a ‘follow rampage’. You add the news sites you read, the bloggers you respect, friends, family, colleagues, business contacts and in turn many of the people that follow or are followed by these accounts.
This seems like a great idea at first, but you find you soon reach a tipping point – in my own case, by following close to 2000 people, Twitter had become nothing more than a never-ending deluge of noise, with useful and informative Tweets getting lost amongst the junk. Even by setting up user lists in Seesmic Desktop (the desktop app I use), I was finding it ever harder to keep up.
A couple of weeks back I made the decision to cut back on who I followed. It was time to ‘purge’.
Before hitting the unfollow option in earnest, I realised it would be a wise idea to set myself some criteria for who I should keep:
- Is the person I’m following bringing any real value to me? The million dollar question. It’s very easy to follow someone just because everyone else is, or because you they have a job that gives the assumption that their tweets will be useful. Often this couldn’t be further from the truth.
- Is the person I’m following tweeting unique information and links or are they mainly retweeting stuff I’m already getting from other sources?
- Does the person I’m following follow me and if they do, do they ever communicate with me or retweet what I put out there?
I’m sure there’s plenty of further criteria of your own that you could add, but this is what suited me personally.
Next, I realised that as I was currently following so many people, it would take me many hours to go through everyone using Twitter on its own. Thankfully there’s some great tools available to help you. I used Your Twitter Karma, so I’ll describe the process I went through in using this tool specifically.
When you log in to Your Twitter Karma (be patient – it can take a few minutes to load your details) you’re presented with a huge list of Twitter users. Under each itemised Twitter account it tells you whether you follow that person, whether they follow you, or whether you both follow each other. Clicking on the avatar brings up that person’s Twitter profile, so you can refresh your memory as to who they are, what they do, and whether their tweets are of value to you.
Next comes the evil part! The purge . . .
Select the users that you wish to stop following, by clicking the checkbox next to their avatar. This can be quite a time-consuming process, but it’s well worth it in the long run. When you’ve selected everyone you want to unfollow, click the ‘bulk unfollow’ button at the bottom of the page.
All done! Now check your Twitter profile to check that your follow count has dropped to what you expect. Be prepared that your follower count may also drop slightly, as some people use auto-follow / auto-unfollow tools that will drop you if you drop them.
2 – Effectively Manage the Remaining People You Follow
In my case, once I’d purged my account I was left with around 200 people I was still following – a drop of over 2000! In return about 200 people stopped following me.
Once I’d got over what I’d done, it was time to effectively manage who I was left with.
This next step is very easy to undertake. Most desktop Twitter applications (such as Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck) allow you to set up usergroups, whereby you can classify the people you follow into distinct groups, such as ‘friends’, ‘colleagues’, ‘business’, ‘celebrities’ etc. In future when you get a new tweet for someone you have allocated to a group it will appear in the appropriate group column. This way you can find and read it with far less difficulty.
Twitter now also allows you to set up lists as well, so you can group together people in a similar way.
3 – Be Prepared to Fall in Love With Twitter All Over Again
I know that what I’ve described sound quite radical, but believe me, if Twitter has become an out of control stream of tweets that you can’t keep up with, it really is your only option.
Now i’ve drastically cut the number of people i follow down to the bare bones, I’ve rediscovered my love for this great tool.
Additionally, whereas before I wouldn’t have dreamed of using Twitter on my iPhone, now I can login to the likes of Tweetie and thumb my way through tweet after tweet of valuable information (and the odd piece of celebrity gossip!).
The value is back!
Please note: Undertake the steps I’ve outlined at your own risk. I can not be held responsible for anything that may happen to your Twitter account as a result of following what you read here. Also be warned that it is not advisable to bulk-unfollow Twitter accounts then bulk-follow new accounts, as Twitter may deem you to be mis-using their service and suspend your account without notice.
@JCDFitness
Timely post. I did this a few weeks back, however I didn’t have thousands of people to wade through. I still did it though because of what you said about value. I would log in to twitter and see a ton of tweets that were of no interest to me whatsoever.
There were a few who unfollowed me as a result but I was probably of no value to them.
@RenaheS
I am new to twitter and don’t have to sort out any followers : )
But, I like to learn as much about twitter as possible.
Thanks for the info!
@financialsamura
Good stuff mate. I plan to always keep how many I follow BELOW 150, and better yet 100 b/c I can’t keep track and there’s too much noise.
I may have to unfollow you too if you keep sending too many tweets!
@bradfordshimp
I like this advice. I have been slowly going through my Twitter account and unfollowing people who don’t follow me and who provide no value for me. I have been using Friend or Follow, but I am anxious to try the service you suggest.
Twitter is supposed to be about conversations, so it makes sense to try to follow people who you will interact with. I don’t know if I will make as drastic a cut as you have, but even the little I have cut so far has added overall value to my Twitter usage.
@GAStroz
Following 2000 seems to be exactly the right time to cutback, made the same decision myself when I reached that milestone. Its great to bring some rigor to the process of doing so, I have explored Your Twitter Karma yet but Tweepular offers similar views of which tweeps you are following that are not following back.
@joeGB
I did it the slow way about 4 months ago. It’s crazy, but your quite right on your opening point, when I first came across Twitter I thought I’d build up a huge following by following the 2000 users, in pretty much the same way you described. I soon realised that this was stupid! So I went through the pain and deleting over 1,500 people who quite frankly were not very useful to me…(no offense to anyone on my list!) I had strict criteria to adhere to!
@RodBurkert
Is it possible to delete people from TweetDeck’s @ autocomplete list? In some cases, I am no longer following certain people. In other cases, the person may have stopped using Twitter. In either case, I am sometimes forced to scroll through a longer list of people because I cannot find a way to remove them.
@RodBurkert
Another thing I don’t understand. What is the difference (in usefulness/value) of Twitter Lists and TweetDeck Groups. Seems to me that if you are primarily using TweetDeck (which I am), or another platform like Seesmic or HootSuite, you are better off creating Groups rather than Lists. What am I missing?
@aksn1p3r
I have also felt the need to purge now that my noise has reached an almost unmanageable 2000 follows. I do however follow users who tweet content that is of interest and relevance to me.
@OscarBaron
Great info. Mark! I wholeheartedly agree, PURGE’em and move on! I like how business trends online and social media go hand in hand. Online business used to be “build it and they will come”, now there’s so many businesses, customers want to focus on quality, human beings, being treated like a real person, and feeling as if they know the people they do business with. Social Media, Twitter, now doing the same thing, following the same trend. It’s not about numbers and followers and blah, blah, blah, it’s about content, and contributions. Are you a contributing member of our social media society, or a moocher, a pretender? The social media world wants to know? Anyhow, great post, keep up the good work, and…lastly, I’d have to also recommend Tweepi as an app. Great “Flush” option and hastens the process somewhat. Cheers!
@chrishlphoto
Thanks for this article…I am newer to twitter and trying to get the hand of following and all that can definitely be confusing.
I especially don’t like the excess noise that can come through from following people that are not really putting out applicable things for you…
Chris
@onviolence
There is a strnae balance between being a broadcaster and being a friend on twitter.
@NaiveLondonGirl
Twitter Karma doesn’t work so well if you have a lot of followers or are following a lot of people. It’s just sort of tedius ticking / unticking all teh boxes. I’ve used the free Huitter once and rather liked it. http://huitter.com/mutuality/ Maybe I will cough up the money to use the pay version sometime (although I doubt it).
@jaredotoole
There is no problem with cutting down on the people that your following. Another great option though is making groups in tweetdeck. You can easily make a few groups of 30,50,100 people that are more manageable while still following the rest of the bunch.
@bloggingbistro
Mark,
I especially like your question: Is the person I’m following bringing any real value to me?
When I first started tweeting, I followed some “big name” people. Several of them posted random ramblings that added zero value to my life. I unfollowed them. After all, they had 18,362 followers; they’d never miss me!
I routinely use http://twitoria.com/ to unfollow inactive followers; it sounds like Your Twitter Karma is more robust. Now that you’ve done your mega-purge, I recommend doing monthly mini-purges. Makes the purging a bit less stressful!
@christiantjr
I can’t say I honestly understand how following a lot of people can be confusing, unless you earnestly want to follow every single tweet of every single person. If I unfollow someone, it means they cannot dm me if they want, and I want them to be able to do that if they want.
Of course if someone is spamming me, I drop them without hesitation, but that is different. Following thousands of people doesn’t mean you have to “keep up” with all the noise, it just means you have to organize it.
I’m just not sure I see where the overload comes in. I have one column which has everyone, and I have things divided up into several columns from there. To me that works just fine; I’d rather have it a bit noisy. That’s just how I roll I suppose
@mrbusinessgolf
Good to see someone else taking control of their time online. I had to post a Twitter Manifesto to outline how I will be using Twitter from now on.
@alltweetapps
You might also wish to try friendorfollow for finding dead weight among those you follow.
@nepalsites
i don’t think pays is the right word but ya it helps manage your contacts and kind of tweets you follow.
@VickiVoisin
TweetDeck solved many of the Twitter Insanity issues for me. Now I rarely review the ‘All Friends’ column. Instead I focus on the other columns where I’ve organized Peeps according to my interests. This is an exclusive group of Peeps who meet certain criteria. Also, my rule is that I usually don’t care who follows me (unless they appear to be unsavory) but I’m much more careful about whom I follow.
@cynfox47
I am new to Twitter, but have already unfollowed some people. They probably did me too, but that’s fine. I am enjoying the dialogue and RTs I sometimes get. I am not looking for thousands of followers, just too unmanageable in my opinion. Great post!
@avasiare
I just think this is a bad idea, especially for a business to do. I read a lot of these posts lately about cutting out a lot of people that you follow. Seth Simonds did a well written one a month or so ago, as well. This may work for the individual, but I don’t think it’s smart for any business to do. Unfollowing people that don’t follow you back is one thing, but I just don’t get this whole theory of the mass unfollow.
Personally, I relate more to the gentleman above who said he likes the noise, I agree, keeps it interesting to me as well. I use Tweetdeck a lot and don’t have anyone broken into a list. My lists on Twitter were created more to help others that may be interested in that topic, than for me to exclude anyone. All of that said, I look at people who follow over 10,000 people and really wonder how they do it.
@ramskill
My post is more aimed at the individual than a business.
However, my points still stand for those using Twitter for their business. It all comes down to how useful your account still is to you when you reaching a certain threshold.
Even with the use of groups in Seesmic I personally still struggled with keeping up with (and classifying into groups) those i followed and finding the quality.
I find little point in being deluged with Tweets that have little or no value to me. I would rather having a trickle of useful, informative, humorous or engaging Tweets, that I can easily group and refer back to.
Noise to me is just that – noise. And a noise means a headache
Thanks for all of your comments so far. Remember, these are just my own personal opinions, that relate to how I use Twitter.
Mark
@talkoftomatoes
THANKS! Am a new tweeter, so am digging for good uses & best practices. Salute!
@sylwilson
Great article, and thank you for the steps to do this, I agree with Christian Russel though, It’s not that difficult to understand whats happening. I guess the “noise” is pleasant to Generation Y as we tend to do 10 different things at once. ie; watch the news, sit on laptop, talk on the phone, all while ordering a pizza online.
So…it’s all in what’s important to you. I do appreciate this though. I do like to get rid of folks who are not following me. So THANKS! Look forward to your tweets and articles!
@scenthive
I’m still trying to find a good service to find out who is unfollowing me. Seems like a have one follow and one leave a day for the past couple weeks. Twitterless is not responding to my emails (I am following them) and Goodbye Buddy has been shoddy.
Any other recs? Thanks!
@megaturner
I know I should probably do this. Not b/c I have even close to 2000 people I follow but b/c apparently I have an anal obsession to read EVERYone I follow. I know this is not a good use of my time, but if I get behind on reading my tweet feed on seesmic, I feel I like I might be missing something! It’s driving me crazy. Does anyone else ever feel like this? Sometimes I feel like I need a twitter support group. Ha!
@megaturner
Well I just went to Your Twitter Karma, and it says, “On January 15, 2010, Twitter instructed us to remove the “bulk unfollow” capability of Twitter Karma as it has been determined to violate their Automation Rules and Best Practices.”
@sylwilson
I know – isn’t it a shame that they disabled the twitter karma bulk unfollow feature? Is there any other service that we can use? I adored that feature and fell in love with your post so much so that I tweeted and told everyone! (Maybe that is why they disabled it) LOL!
@Peekr
I have to do the same thing with my accounts. I’ve used a few different tools, and some are better than others. I like http://mytweeple.com and I think it may be the best and I’ll start with it the next time I clean-up an account.
Learn more about it here…
http://oneforty.com/item/my-tweeple